The Brief

Cbeebies were looking to bolster their online “Justin’s House” offering with a fresh new HTML5 experience, and thought it presented a great opportunity to introduce a new dimension to the established Justin’s House universe: Little Monster’s world!

They came to us with a solid idea of what they wanted: three differently themed worlds, each with 5 interactions, that focused on themes of friendship, exploration and humour, and that would be simple and easy to use for their young target audience of 2 – 5 years old.

We were to use a pre-existing game engine, provided by the BBC, so it was up to us to take that system and push the limits of what it could do to produce the best possible result.

Our Response

We relished the opportunity to come up with brand new areas in a previously unexplored part of the brand universe!

Based on what we collectively thought would be the most fun and work best with the brand and characters, we ended up creating the sparkling ice zone (complete with sledges, penguins and polar bears!), the spooky-slime zone (featuring disco spiders and groovy ghosts) and the delicious foody zone (with accompanying jam doughnuts, sleepy dragonfruit and plenty of cake!)

We also looked for ways, wherever possible to push the limits of the BBC’s in-house engine to produce a result that set this game apart from previous experiences powered by the same underpinnings.

The Challenges

Working with an external platform meant we had to be flexible with the tool chain and workflow, but it was all well documented and we got up to speed quickly.

It was important to us to create side characters, backgrounds and props that all very much felt at home with the “Justin’s House” brand. This can sometimes be a bit tricky as there are several stakeholders involved but with tight collaboration we arrived at results that everyone was happy with.

The Result

The whole experience is grounded in a central hub (set within Justin’s House) which allows players to complete the three zones in any order they like. Each zone is linked to one of Little Monster’s hatches that exist in the house. Tap a hatch to follow Little Monster as she disappears down it, and discover a set of hilarious interactions, including getting a penguin ready for a disco or stopping all the jam squirting out of six giant doughnuts, as you make your way through each zone.

“Little Monster’s Cheeky Chase” allows players to dive into an entirely new part of the “Justin’s House” world for the very first time. We’ve designed the experience to compliment the TV show and extend the brand universe, injecting the familiar off-the-wall sense of humour and pantomime fun into 15 colourful interactions, that can be played on any device.

Cbeebies we’re thrilled with the results overall and loved the graphical style we came up with so much that they asked us to create additional assets to be used for a separate ‘Make a Picture’ experience that they were building!